Gretchen Rubin is conducting research about happiness for her next book. Along the way, she’s sharing some of the things she has learned on her site, The Happiness Project.

Recently she wrote about the value of a ritual. She says that following a routine helps condition our minds for the task at hand and offers some great examples. We highly recommend that you read her fantastic post.

We all have rituals – like our getting-ready-for-work routine or our getting-started-at-work process. Some are born of necessity. Others happen with purpose for a purpose. Still others happen by default.

It’s important to pay attention to all of our rituals. It’s most crucial to pay attention to the ones that happen by default. Is this really something you want / need to do?

It’s also crucial to consider rituals that are missing. Perhaps you’ve set a goal, but you haven’t established a routine that helps you achieve it.

Some people say they don’t follow routines because they like to live spontaneously. Certainly, some flexibility is important to keep life fun – sometimes it pays to “shake up” your routine to keep your excitement level up.

However, rituals aren’t designed to limit us. In fact, quite the opposite – they should free us up! They help us step through each part of our day in an orderly process. They help us remove the noise and chaos from our minds so we can be our best when it’s needed.